"Percentage change since 2002 in average premiums paid to large US health-insurance companies: +87%
Percentage change in the profits of the top ten insurance companies: +428%
"Chances that an American bankrupted by medical bills has health insurance: 7 in 10
From Chris Hedges' post, This Isn't Reform, It's Robbery. Read It.
4 comments:
O wow! I had no idea about any but the bankruptcy figures.
Why is a talking point now? This has been an ongoing problem since what...the 90s?
i had read the chris hedges article too and found the stats at the beginning (as well as the article) quite powerful. i keep imagining waving it around at town hall meetings (but first i'd have to find an ak47 to wear over my shoulder!;)
also yesterday i saw a clip on democracy now of obama playing golf on martha's vineyard with ubs ceo wolff. maybe it was the comment about how much money he's hoarding overseas to keep from paying taxes. maybe it was that i'm still grappling with understanding how it's possible to spend $35,000 on vacation. maybe it was the picture perfect figure obama cut on the course himself with his winning smile and athletic, fashionable physique. not sure. but it was like a sudden splash of ice water in my face. it all cut thru and exposed the real man to me, i.e., a total marketing job, a walking, talking falsehood.
your follow up today with john pilger pretty much sums up what i'd been shocked into seeing yesterday- finally! real lenses instead of the rose colored ones i'd been looking thru and trying to believe.
another post on commondreams.org by zach carter, "depression era inequality, only worse" probably also contributed to the breakthru. carter goes into the new data on income inequality...the top 0.01% of u.s. earners had 6% of total u.s. wages, double the level of 2000. probably more shocking to me was that earners in the top 10% take home 49.7% of all wages- a gap larger than the great depression or the gilded age of the roaring 20s.
this is class warfare and it's increasingly clear who obama represents.
keep walking, kate! i'm still pedaling!
becky
Becky, sister-woman, I'm still walking. Okay - I missed 4 days in a row because my son was sick. The last time I missed that many was when I was sick in May. It is no excuse, but there you have it. I let a brain-intensive project keep me seated rather than walk alone. We got back in the groove yesterday (his flu has passed) and it felt good. Pedal on, becky! and keep reminding me there are others who can't stomach the pretense of progressive while being a courtier to the owners.
Beany, sorry I didn't respond yesterday (deadline for elementary school project). Also, I couldn't tell if your response was in the form of a rhetorical question. The first statistic shows the premiums paid were +87% - higher than in the nineties. So, even though it was a sham in the 90's - the scale now is unrivaled. It was obvious to some a decade ago, but since then profits rose four hundred times with more people denied (or priced out) care than ever before in history. The upcoming vote (now being held up by 6 senators on the finance committee) make this a valid talking point for this week.
I am of the mind that it is better to vote against what is essentially a gift to the insurance and pharma industries.
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